5. Roles and Virtues: Early Confucians on Social Order and the Different Aspects of Ethics

Aaron Stalnaker

6. That's What Friends Are For: A Confucian Perspective on the Moral Significance of Friendship

Cheryl Cottine

Part III: Professional Roles

7. Crossing the Bridge

W. Bradley Wendel

8. Role Virtues, Doctor-Patience Relationships, and Virtuous Policy

Justin Oakley

Part IV: Roles and Reasons

9. Deliberative Restriction and Professional Roles

Garrett Cullity

10. Roles and Reasons

Sophie Grace Chappell.

(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Although our moral lives would be unrecognisable without them, roles have received little attention from analytic moral philosophers. Roles are central to our lives and to our engagement with one another, and should be analysed in connection with our core notions of ethics such as virtue, reason, and obligation. This volume aims to redress the neglect of role ethics by confronting the tensions between conceptions of impartial morality and role obligations in the history of analytic philosophy and the Confucian tradition. Different perspectives on the ethical significance of roles can be found by looking to debates within professional and applied ethics, by challenging existing accounts of how roles generate reasons, by questioning the hegemony of ethical reasons, and by exploring the relation between expertise and virtue. The essays tackle several core questions related to these debates: What are roles and what is their normative import? To what extent are roles and the ethics of roles central to ethics as opposed to virtue in general, and obligation in general? Are role obligations characteristically incompatible with ordinary morality in professions such as business, law, and medicine? How does practical reason function in relation to roles? Perspectives in Role Ethics is an examination of a largely neglected topic in ethics. It will appeal to a broad range of scholars in normative ethics, virtue ethics, non-Western ethics, and applied ethics interested in the importance of roles in our moral life. (source: Nielsen Book Data)

What makes a person liberal or conservative? Why does the Democratic Party scare off so many possible supporters? When does our "injustice trigger" get pulled, and how can fairness overcome our human need to look for a zero-sum outcome to our political battles? Tapping into a pop culture zeitgeist linking Bugs Bunny, Taylor Swift, and John Belushi; through popular science and the human brain; to our political predilections, arguments, and distrusts, Daniel Meegan suggests that fairness and equality are key elements missing in today's society. Having crossed the border to take up residency in Canada, Meegan, an American citizen, has seen first-hand how people enjoy as rights what Americans view as privileges. Fascinated with this tension, he suggests that American liberals are just missing the point. If progressives want to win the vote, they need to change strategy completely and champion government benefits for everyone, not just those of lower income. If everyone has access to inexpensive quality health care, open and extensive parental leave, and free postsecondary education, then everyone will be happier and society will be fair. The Left will also overcome an argument of the Right that successfully, though incongruously, appeals to the middle- and upper-middle classes: that policies that help the economically disadvantaged are inherently bad for others. Making society fair and equal, Meegan argues, would strengthen the moral and political position of the Democratic Party and place it in a position to revive American civic life. Fairness, he writes, should be selfishly enjoyed by everyone. (source: Nielsen Book Data)

In recent years atheism has become ever more visible, acceptable, and influential. Atheist apologists have become increasingly vociferous and confident in their claims: that a morality requiring benevolence towards all and universal human rights need not be grounded in religion; that modern science disproves the existence of God; and that there is nothing innately religious about human beings. In Atheist Overreach, Christian Smith takes a look at the evidence and arguments, and explains why we ought to be skeptical of these atheists' claims about morality, science, and human nature. He does not argue that atheism is necessarily wrong, but rather that its advocates are advancing crucial claims that are neither rationally defensible nor realistic. Their committed worldview feeds unhelpful arguments and contributes to the increasing polarization of today's political landscape. Everyone involved in the theism-atheism debates, in shared moral reflection, and in the public consumption of the findings of science should be committed to careful reasoning and rigorous criticism. This book provides readers with the information they need to participate more knowledgably in debates about atheism and what it means for our society. (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Beyond the Rhetoric of Pain presents a fresh, interdisciplinary approach to the current research on pain from a variety of scholarly angles within Literature, Film and Media, Game Studies, Art History, Hispanic Studies, Memory Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, and Law. Through the combination of these perspectives, this volume goes beyond the existing structures within and across these disciplines framing new concepts of pain in attitude, practice, language, and ethics of response to pain. Comprised of fourteen unique essays, Beyond the Rhetoric of Pain maintains a common thread of analysis using a historical and cultural lens to explore the rhetoric of pain. Considering various methodologies, this volume questions the ethical, social and political demands pain makes upon those who feel, watch or speak it. Arranged to move from historical cases and relevance of pain in history towards the contemporary movement, topics include pain as a social figure, rhetorical tool, artistic metaphor, and political representation in jurisprudence. (source: Nielsen Book Data)

9. Freedom without choice: medieval theories of the essence of freedom Tobias Hoffmann--

10. Practical reasoning M. V. Dougherty--

11. Will and intellect Thomas Williams--

12. Emotions Martin Pickave--

13. Medieval Islamic and Christian mysticism and the problem of a 'mystical ethics' Amber Griffioen and Mohammad Sadeg Zahedi--

14. Economic ethics Roberto Lambertini--

15. Self-interest, self-sacrifice, and the common good John Marenbon--

16. Sin and grace Eileen Sweeney.

(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Ethics was a central preoccupation of medieval philosophers, and medieval ethical thought is rich, diverse, and inventive. Yet standard histories of ethics often skip quickly over the medievals, and histories of medieval philosophy often fail to do justice to the centrality of ethical concerns in medieval thought. This volume presents the full range of medieval ethics in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish philosophy in a way that is accessible to a non-specialist and reveals the liveliness and sophistication of medieval ethical thought. In Part I there is a series of historical chapters presenting developmental and contextual accounts of Christian, Islamic, and Jewish ethics. Part II offers topical chapters on such central themes as happiness, virtue, law, and freedom, as well as on less-studied aspects of medieval ethics such as economic ethics, the ethical dimensions of mysticism, and sin and grace. This will be an important volume for students of ethics and medieval philosophy. (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Chapter 3: Habits of Encountering Singularity through Performances of Poetry and Caring

Chapter 4: Poetry, Care, and Moral Progress.

(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Care Ethics and Poetry is the first book to address the relationship between poetry and feminist care ethics. The authors argue that morality, and more specifically, moral progress, is a product of inquiry, imagination, and confronting new experiences. Engaging poetry, therefore, can contribute to the habits necessary for a robust moral life-specifically, caring. Each chapter offers poems that can provoke considerations of moral relations without explicitly moralizing. The book contributes to valorizing poetry and aesthetic experience as much as it does to reassessing how we think about care ethics. (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Celebrity introduces the key terms and concepts, dilemmas and issues that are central to the study and critical understanding of celebrity. Drawing on two dynamic models from two different modes of enquiry - the circuit of celebrity culture and the circuit of celebrity affect - this book explores the multi-layered, multi-faceted contexts and concepts that sit within and surround the study of celebrity. Through building a critical story about celebrity, Sean Redmond discusses key topics such as identity and representation; the celebrity body; the consumption of celebrity and celebrity culture; and the sensory connection between fans and celebrities, gender, activism, gossip and toxicity. Including case studies on Miley Cyrus, David Bowie, Scarlett Johansson and Kate Winslet, Celebrity is a dynamic and topical volume ideal for students and academics in celebrity and cultural studies. (source: Nielsen Book Data)

1. The foundations: individualism, media, and the public sphere, theatre, court society

2. Celebrity's secret: the economy of attention

3. Celebrity as a social form: status, charisma, and power

4. Imagined community, self-formation, and long-distance intimacy

5. Celebrity politics: performance, populism, and philanthropy

6. CEO, firm, and worker celebrity

7. Celebrity in cyberspace: micro-celebrity and globalization

Conclusion: the elusive rationality of celebrity.

(source: Nielsen Book Data)

On television and in films, in magazines and books, on the Internet and in the realm of politics, celebrities of all sorts seem to dominate our attention. Celebrity Society: The Struggle for Attention brings new perspectives to our understanding of how the figure of `the celebrity' is bound up with the structure and dynamics of society, economics, and politics. It outlines how the `celebrification of society' is not just the twentieth-century product of Hollywood and television, but a long-term historical process, beginning with Christian saints, the printing press, theatre, and art. Drawing on the ideas of Norbert Elias, the book explains how contemporary celebrity society is the heir (or heiress) of `court society', taking on but also transforming many of the functions of the aristocracy. As well as examining celebrity in all the familiar arenas - film, television, music, fashion, and sport - Celebrity Society also includes the analysis of celebrity in business and management, politics, humanitarianism, and philanthropy. A key feature of the book is its development of the idea that celebrity is driven by the `economy of attention', since attention has become a form of capital - attention capital - in the Information and Internet age. In this second edition the author has updated and significantly revised this path-breaking book to include a more detailed discussion of attention capital, the question of gender and celebrity, populism, fans, fandom, and self-formation, micro-celebrity, and personal or self-branding, the `worker celebrity', and the impact of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Celebrity is an exciting and rapidly expanding field of social science, making this engaging book a valuable resource for students and scholars in sociology, politics, history, celebrity studies, cultural studies, the sociology of media, and cultural theory. (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This book examines the business of charity - including fundraising, marketing, branding, financial accountability and the nexus of benevolence, politics and capitalism - in Britain from the development of the British Red Cross in 1870 to 1912. Whilst most studies focus on the distribution of charity, Sarah Roddy, Julie-Marie Strange and Bertrand Taithe look at the roots of the modern third sector, exploring how charities appropriated features more readily associated with commercial enterprises in order to compete and obtain money, manage and account for that money and monetize compassion. Drawing on a wide range of archival research from Charity Organization Societies, Wood Street Mission, Salvation Army, League of Help and Jewish Soup Kitchen, among many others, The Charity Market and Humanitarianism in Britain, 1870-1912 sheds new light on the history of philanthropy in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. This book is open access and available to read for FREE on Bloomsbury Collections: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/the-charity-market-an d-humanitarianism-in-britain-1870-1912/. (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The Concept of Intrinsic Evil and Catholic Theological Ethics examines the origin and meaning of the concept of intrinsic evil and its use in sexual ethics in the teachings of the Catholic Church, and in the construction of a systematic approach to theological ethics. It concludes with a suggestion of how the concept might be used in future ethical discourse. (source: Nielsen Book Data)

After World War II, the question of how to define a universal human nature took on new urgency. Creatures of Cain charts the rise and precipitous fall in Cold War America of a theory that attributed man (TM)s evolutionary success to his unique capacity for murder. Drawing on a wealth of archival materials and in-depth interviews, Erika Lorraine Milam reveals how the scientists who advanced this oekiller ape theory capitalized on an expanding postwar market in intellectual paperbacks and widespread faith in the power of science to solve humanity (TM)s problems, even to answer the most fundamental questions of human identity. The killer ape theory spread quickly from colloquial science publications to late-night television, classrooms, political debates, and Hollywood films. Behind the scenes, however, scientists were sharply divided, their disagreements centering squarely on questions of race and gender. Then, in the 1970s, the theory unraveled altogether when primatologists discovered that chimpanzees also kill members of their own species. While the discovery brought an end to definitions of human exceptionalism delineated by violence, Milam shows how some evolutionists began to argue for a shared chimpanzee-human history of aggression even as other scientists discredited such theories as sloppy popularizations. A wide-ranging account of a compelling episode in American science, Creatures of Cain argues that the legacy of the killer ape persists today in the conviction that science can resolve the essential dilemmas of human nature. (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This book engages in cross-tradition scholarship, investigating the processes associated with cultivating or nurturing the self in order to live good lives. Both Ancient Chinese and Greek philosophers provide accounts of the life lived well: a Confucian junzi, a Daoist sage and a Greek phronimos. By focusing on the processes rather than the aims of cultivating a good life, an international team of scholars investigate how a person develops and practices a way of life especially in these two traditions. They look at what is involved in developing practical wisdom, exercising reason, cultivating equanimity and fostering reliability. Drawing on the insights of thinkers including Plato, Confucius, Han Fei and Marcus Aurelius, they examine themes of harmony, balance and beauty, highlight the different concerns of scepticism across both traditions, and discuss action as an indispensable method of learning and, indeed, as constitutive of self. The result is a valuable collection opening up new lines of inquiry in ethics, demonstrating the importance of philosophical ideas from across cultural traditions. (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Nine rules for moral decency that should be followed strictly and without exception.

You're probably never going to be a saint. Even so, let's face it: you could be a better person. We all could. But what does that mean for you? In a world full of suffering and deprivation, it's easy to despair--and it's also easy to judge ourselves for not doing more. Even if we gave away everything we own and devoted ourselves to good works, it wouldn't solve all the world's problems. It would make them better, though. So is that what we have to do? Is anything less a moral failure? Can we lead a fundamentally decent life without taking such drastic steps? Todd May has answers. He's not the sort of philosopher who tells us we have to be model citizens who display perfect ethics in every decision we make. He's realistic: he understands that living up to ideals is a constant struggle. In A Decent Life, May leads readers through the traditional philosophical bases of a number of arguments about what ethics asks of us, then he develops a more reasonable and achievable way of thinking about them, one that shows us how we can use philosophical insights to participate in the complicated world around us. He explores how we should approach the many relationships in our lives--with friends, family, animals, people in need--through the use of a more forgiving, if no less fundamentally serious, moral compass. With humor, insight, and a lively and accessible style, May opens a discussion about how we can, realistically, lead the good life that we aspire to. A philosophy of goodness that leaves it all but unattainable is ultimately self-defeating. Instead, Todd May stands at the forefront of a new wave of philosophy that sensibly reframes our morals and redefines what it means to live a decent life. (source: Nielsen Book Data)